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Monday, October 2, 2017

San Antonio Brewers Head to Denver's Great American Beer Festival

The Great American Beer Festival (GABF) is back for its 35th year with over 3,900 beers and 800 breweries represented in 2017. Each year sees more brewery exhibits, with more brews to quaff and tickets sell out at record pace. Here’s how the Alamo City will be represented at the largest beer festival in the country.

Freetail Brewing and Southerleigh Fine Food and Brewery will be the lone booth representatives for San Antonio, though several others such as Mad Pecker Brewing, have entered the GABF competition. This year the competition will see 8,100 different beers from more than 2,290 breweries in 98 categories covering 160 different styles. Southerleigh will be pouring the ever-popular Imperial Stout Putin’s Revenge, Sage on Saison, Augustus Blue, Godzilla Go Juice and That Heirloom Over There in the main hall. All but Putin’s are entered in the GABF competition, the world’s largest commercial beer competition.

Other San Antonio breweries entering the GABF competition are Mad Pecker Brewing with its Ridge Creek Blonde and Bitter Soul ESB.

“It was important for us to enter this year, if anything to prove to ourselves that we could see through the entry process and give SA and Texas another opportunity at claiming a medal,” said owner/brewer Jason Gonzalez.

Also throwing their hats in the ring are Ranger Creek with San Antonio Lager, Love Struck Hefe and Oktoberfest; and Alamo Beer Co with their Golden Ale, Amber Lager, and Pilsner.

While they are not pouring or entering their beers at GABF, The Granary ‘Cue and Brew’s co-founder and head chef, Tim Rattray will be at the festival cooking for Paired, a food and beer event. Paired is an event within the GABF festival that highlights celebrated chefs and independent brewers from around the country. Small plates are created to specifically pair (get it) with beers from the participating breweries. Rattray will team up with Blue Blood Brewing out of Lincoln, Nebraska.

Texas and San Antonio have fared well over the years at GABF, with San Antonio area 5 Stones Artisan Brewery winning silver in 2015, thrusting the Lone Star State more and more into the limelight each year. Let’s see how Texas breweries do in 2017.